


silence is golden

by cishet



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Post-Canon, emotional monologuing, selfindulgent overuse of the em dash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21659419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cishet/pseuds/cishet
Summary: “El,” Byleth breathes after they part, slightly dazed. “If we— If we were to have children. What would you name them?”“When we have children,” Edelgard corrects.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 19
Kudos: 264





	silence is golden

“Do you ever think about having children, El?”

Byleth feels Edelgard, who had been spent from earlier exertion and beginning to drift off to sleep, come to attention at the question that tumbled impulsively from her lips. The words hang in the air as silence settles around them, a silence so still that Byleth could almost swear she hears the whisper-flicker of golden candlelight in the darkness. With Edelgard’s head tucked against her chest and arm draped across bare back, she feels the way Edelgard holds her breath, the slight bob in her throat when she swallows.

After a moment, Edelgard responds. “What brought this on, Byleth?”

Byleth keeps her eyes trained to the carved wood of the ceiling. “The other day, when we dined with Hubert and Ferdinand at their home. Seeing them made me think about it. About… having something like theirs, someday. Taking care of something together. Watching something grow, together. Someday. With you,” she says, words tripping clumsily off her tongue.

She would feel embarrassed at her fumbling if anyone else had been present, but her voice falls on Edelgard’s ears alone. Just Edelgard, who had loved her through too many years of half-feeling to be dissuaded from her side by mere half-formed thoughts.

“Byleth, don’t have any children. They have horses and they have dogs. Hunting dogs, at that. I should surely hope that my dear teacher knows the difference,” Edelgard quips teasingly.

“I’m not quite sure I do, considering the way they dote on them,” Byleth parries mock-seriously. A light slap to Byleth’s arm follows not a moment later, and the quick curl of a grin against her skin.

“If you would like to adopt some cats, that can be arranged. Or perhaps some houseplants, though we would have to fight to prevent the staff from tending to them. And I am afraid your green thumb far outshines my own.”

Byleth laughs at that. It had taken years to grow accustomed to the way human emotions came to her since Rhea’s demise, fast and electric and with an intensity no one had ever equipped her to handle. It had taken even longer still to process the way she felt when the emotions _stopped_ feeling so foreign to her, when she started catching herself taking her humanity for granted.

In many moments she still feels clumsy and inexperienced, never quite becoming adept at organising the jumble of her feelings and impulses. At times, she still feels as though she’s doing the “human” thing all wrong. But when she sees the antics of her students or catches a glint of playfulness in her wife’s eyes, she laughs freely now. That, she has grown used to.

“I may take you up on that offer some time, my heart. But still. Have you?”

“I have, yes,” Edelgard admits. “More than occasionally, and for far longer than just recently. I would like to have children quite dearly, in fact.”

Byleth can feel the rising heat of the cheek that rests against her chest.

“How long?” she asks. _How long have you been holding this inside?_

“I am not quite sure. Years, maybe. Perhaps a lifetime.”

“You never told me.”

“No, I never did.”

Edelgard pauses, gathering. Shifts upwards to tuck her head into the crook of Byleth’s neck. She has a certain way of holding her breath in her chest when she is thinking over something deeply, collecting her thoughts and allowing them to crystallise in perfect clarity. So Byleth waits, waits until Edelgard’s words come to her, until she is ready to speak. Lets hand slide to waist, stroking idly along raised lines of scar tissue.

She breathes, and cradles the silence between them for what could be minutes or hours. When Edelgard finally speaks, her voice is soft and low as smoke.

“Once, I scarcely allowed myself to entertain such self-indulgent thoughts at all. Back when I did not know how many years still remained in my grasp, between the life which was stolen from me and that which continued to slip between my fingers like so many grains of sand. As far as I was concerned, I had none. There was no time to consider what I wanted. Only what had to be done.”

Byleth remembers Edelgard and Lysithea. At the academy, during the war. Burning so fiercely and brilliantly, twin candles that set themselves alight from both ends because they already knew they would not last the night.

“After my second crest was removed, I suddenly stole those years back. I had time, time enough to believe I had a _future_. But there was so much work to be done in the aftermath of the war: so much to be repaired, so much to be forged anew. My duty is, was, has always been to Fódlan’s future. To think about building a family of my own before building the new structure of society would have been selfish. One could call it frivolous, even, in this world without heirs or bloodlines.”

Byleth wraps her arm tighter around Edelgard's side, pulling them closer together. “It’s not selfish, El. That’s— You're not selfish. You may be important to Fódlan, but your life—it’s your own. You’re human too, just like any of us. You can— You’re allowed to want things,” she says, voice halting. Curse her ever-leaden tongue.

“I wonder about that,” Edelgard murmurs. “My very existence rests upon the death and sacrifice of others, of my own flesh and blood. To use this life, their lives, for my own satisfaction… I once found the very idea disrespectful at best. Unforgivable at worst.

“You helped me learn that I could be not the Emperor or some Nemesis born anew, but simply Edelgard. And we—the two of us, our allies, the people—have all worked tirelessly to ensure that Fódlan can now stand on its own. Yet even after all these years, I find I still have not quite grown accustomed to it. To being my own person. To wanting.

“I count myself incredibly lucky, you know. I have the Black Eagles, whole and sound. And I have you by my side, and the moments we steal away together. This is already more than I ever dared to hope for, a lifetime ago. Who am I to ask for more?”

Though Edelgard’s voice is as calm and measured as always, her words make Byleth’s heart ache. Without looking, she sees the glint of candlelight on the silver chain around Edelgard’s neck, where she carries her father’s ring. Feels the beating of the heart in her chest, feels her heart cradled against her side. They have been given so much already.

Byleth thinks, _You are Edelgard von Hresvelg. You are the one who laid down your heart and raised your axe to lead this world into the dawn. You are a fighter, a friend, a leader, a lover. My wife. You are the one for whom my heart beats, for whom I draw breath. Who among us could possibly ask for more, if not you?_

She does not give voice to these thoughts. Her mind is as it was many years ago, when she was learning how to live like a newborn fawn—a mess of jumbled emotion that threatens to spill forth gracelessly, unceremoniously. Though neither of them have ever cared for ceremony, Byleth draws in a deep breath and holds it, willing her thoughts into line.

Edelgard waits.

Eventually, Byleth finds the words, or something close enough to them. “You were not so wrong, you know, on that day I became a professor. Do you remember? When you said we had similar personalities. I once felt I was more sword than person. Simply a weapon to be pointed at a target, unthinking and unfeeling. No past, present, or future. It was not enough of a life to be called my own.

“We are alike, you and I. Both made as tools to serve another’s ends. But you don’t belong to the people, or”—here she stumbles—“or to _those_ people, any more than I belong to… Rhea, or anyone else. People called me a Demon once, and I find myself again and again proving them wrong. I choose for myself what I am. I choose to nurture, not destroy. I choose to love. I choose my place by your side, and our future together.

“That’s something you taught me, El. And you get that choice too. That kind of desire—wanting a life for yourself, wanting to share that with someone—it’s not selfish. It’s not a matter of you asking for more, but of having more to give. So don’t say you don’t deserve it, because you do. We all do.”

Gentle silence settles between them as Edelgard mulls over Byleth’s words. A hand shifts from waist up to card fingers through silken hair. The low candlelight that throws itself across the room lends a golden tint to its shock-white hue.

“Thank you, my teacher,” Edelgard murmurs eventually, voice rising just barely above a whisper.

“You don’t need to call me that, El, I’m not— We’ve not been teacher and student for a long time.”

“And yet, I still continue to learn from you. You have always walked by my side, and you know how deeply I appreciate your guidance. So allow me thank you just this once, my light.”

Byleth finds herself wanting to kiss Edelgard. She wants to kiss her, and has no reason not to, and so she does. Lifts up her chin and presses once, twice, again and again to yielding lips. Edelgard sighs and sinks in deeper, hand lifting to frame cheek.

“El,” Byleth breathes after they part, slightly dazed. “If we— If we were to have children. What would you name them?”

“ _When_ we have children,” Edelgard corrects. “Alina for a girl, and Henrik for a boy.” Before Byleth can ask, she continues. “They were my siblings. The two youngest, who had the most taken from them.”

Her tone is soft, but resolute. This is not a question she is considering for the first time.

“I may still be here, but all eleven of us died beneath the palace, once. That dungeon may as well have been a burial tomb. There is a life that none of us had the chance to live. And while what was lost can never truly be returned, sometimes I find myself wishing I could give back what was stolen from them, in however small a way. What was stolen from us.

“You know I care nothing for bloodlines or my family name, but for at least one Hresvelg child to escape that fate and live out their days in peace and happiness, unburdened—the fact that I could give that to our children means more than I can say.”

The sound of those words in her ear sends a thrill down Byleth’s spine— _our children, our children._ She likes the warmth with which it settles inside her.

“I think,” she says, “if we were to have a boy. I’d like to name him Jeralt.”

Edelgard nods. “Alina and Jeralt, then.”

Byleth is suddenly struck by an issue with their plan, a testament to how little she had considered the entire matter before bringing it up tonight. “El,” she ventures, cautiously. “I hadn’t realised this before, but neither of us have a penis. How would we—”

A smirk plays its way across Edelgard’s lips, some of her earlier playfulness returning, and Byleth preemptively braces for impact. “Truly? In our five years of intimacy, you never once noticed our genitalia before this moment? You simply asked if I wanted children with you without considering if they were an actual possibility? Really, Byleth.”

She has no witty response to that, not when it’s half true. “That’s not the way I meant it. And I just… hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.”

“Well, you should try asking Manuela about the”—Edelgard sucks a kiss just below her jaw—“options. I believe that conversation would be most illuminating.”

Byleth lifts her head to watch as Edelgard inches downwards. “I can’t tell for sure, but I don’t think this is the most— _ah_ —effective. Course of action.”

“Oh?” Edelgard looks up to meet her gaze, the cool twinkle in her eyes stark against the golden cast of her skin and hair. “Well, if you aren’t sure, then wouldn’t you like to find out?”

She can only laugh at that, grinning as her head falls back onto the pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> literally never want children for myself, but edeleth nuclear family indulgence is *chef's kiss*
> 
> the title is half a self-callout for saying i enjoy prose that communicates through description without dialogue but writing 2k words of straight dialogue anyway
> 
> i'm over at @butchidols on twitter where i champion edeleth rights to domestic bliss


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